As we all know, Blizzard does next to nothing about people being abusive, racist, harassing, etc in chat. This is understandable! It's a really hard, labor-intensive job to sift through a ton of reports. Also, everyone has different notions of what is inappropriate - some people really value being able to talk trash, and while that's not my thing, I guess they have fun with it.
But many of us get tired of getting "fuk u lern to play" in chat 80% of the time someone friends us, and so we stop accepting all friend requests, and that's kinda a shame. Encouraging people to make new friends and have fun and laugh together is clearly one of Blizzard's goals for the game, just look at the Fireside Gatherings. Ubiquitous toxic chat does a lot of damage to that goal.
So why not let people choose their chat preferences, and handle it in an automated way? People who want some semblence of civility can select a "polite chat only" option. If you're polite-only, and someone sends you abusive messages, you flag it. If too high a percentage of your chat messages to polite-only users get flagged, you get tagged as rude, and lose the ability to send chat to polite-only users for a few days. (Or a few weeks if it happens again, or forever if it keeps happening.) Of course, if you get tagged as rude, you can't select polite-only anymore.
Minor development effort, no ongoing manual effort, everyone gets to choose the kind of chat experience they want, problem solved. Make this happen, Blizzard!
A single flag wouldn't tag a user. For malicious flagging to work you'd need a coordinated attack by a bunch of people, all currently tagged polite, to all friend a particular user, have their request accepted, exchange chat messages, and flag them. That seems like an unnatural pattern of behavior that'd be easy to automatically detect and discredit.
Let's figure out how to keep the meta from cooling into a tepid cesspool of net-decks that suck every inch of fun out of the game (at least in casual mode) first.
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I agree with this. Today I BM a guy without knowing it (i had clear lethal but didn't see iy after some seconds) , I add him to say sorry and he didnt accept (I dont blame him)
If he would have seen a "polite check", i think I would have had the chance to say sorry yo him
I don't think there is a need for this. [...] You just remove them and let them be
Maybe you don't feel there's a problem, but clearly a lot of people disagree. There are complaints about the toxicity of the Hearthstone community ALL THE TIME. Just look at the "insulting and racist player behavior" thread. And one of the usual responses to those complaints is "well duh, why are you accepting friend requests, of course it's going to be someone abusive and insulting".
I don't think there is a need for this. [...] You just remove them and let them be
Maybe you don't feel there's a problem, but clearly a lot of people disagree. There are complaints about the toxicity of the Hearthstone community ALL THE TIME. Just look at the "insulting and racist player behavior" thread. And one of the usual responses to those complaints is "well duh, why are you accepting friend requests, of course it's going to be someone abusive and insulting".
That is because, sadly, there are a considerable amount of cry babies playing this game. Ignoring their requests is the best thing we can do.
3. ... to accept someone as a "friend" over Battle.net (you do NOT friend someone over Hearthstone, it goes through the battle.net client), that's a concious decision. It is the same thing as walking up to a stranger on the street if that street contained 'roughly 50 million people and telling them "be my friend".
Clearly that's not how Blizzard views it, given that they have "add the last person I played as a friend" as prominent functionality in the client. The metaphor presented by the game and marketing is that of strangers coming to the same tavern and playing a game together. I am proposing a way to bring that metaphor closer to reality. I would not go to a tavern to play a game where I was unable to talk to anyone else in the tavern, or where most people who tried to start a conversation with me yelled insults at me.
You've yet to explain WHY this proposal wouldn't work. You refer to the DotA community. I've never played DotA; care to explain how DotA proves this proposal useless? You complain that Hearthstone chat is provided by Battle.net. That doesn't make it any more difficult to implement.
And again, this has NO EFFECT on anyone who doesn't opt in. It is not a chat ban. It's taking the concept of blocking other users and adding server support for sharing those blocking preferences, so instead of a few hundred thousand people each blocking a small handful of users which does nothing, you have a few hundred thousand people sharing their blocks so any chat they get is from someone who not many others in the group have found a reason to block.
What do you do if you have two separate people on high legend, one who is filtered out due to rude language, and one who is not, but they end up never facing each other due to this feature? I know this is quite a niche example, but say these two players ended up being something like rank 2 & rank 3 legend and they need to face each other at some point to compete for rank 1 legend, but they can't due to this feature?
What do you do if you have two separate people on high legend, one who is filtered out due to rude language, and one who is not, but they end up never facing each other due to this feature? I know this is quite a niche example, but say these two players ended up being something like rank 2 & rank 3 legend and they need to face each other at some point to compete for rank 1 legend, but they can't due to this feature?
I'm not proposing any change to matchmaking, just to handling of chat requests. If rank 2 prefers not to receive chat messages from people who've been frequently flagged, and rank 3 has been frequently flagged, they can still play. Rank 3 just can't add/chat to Rank 2.
This may work if you already have the rude/polite flags up for people. The problem is getting the flags up in the first place.
For example, if a person is being rude then alnog with the rudeness, they are going to go flag you, assuming this is day 1 of the patch and, thus, no one has been marked 'rude' yet. Given that this person is already going out of the way to cuss you out an additional step to mark you 'rude' doesn't seem rather silly.
As such you could potentially be marked as 'rude' by every rude person you meet while they get marked back by yourself. If, say, after 10 people you get the rude flag, that potentially means after 10 cussings you'll be automarked as rude by the system. Those rude people will eventually be marked as 'rude' as well of course.
But eventually you get a case ofa whole lot of innocent folks being dragged down to 'rude hell' not being able to talk to 'polite' folks or block the 'rude' folks.
That's just one key problem that many companies need to get a handle of: automation doesn't work for stuff like this. Any time you make an automated rule based system with set results you'll result in exceptions that fall between the cracks and the ability to manipulate the system. A great system can probably handle 60-80% of cases successfully but you need something flexible like a human brain reviewing the situation, to avoid the false flags and dirty tricksters. But if we had that then a simple report system would work out with a quick reviewer to catch the oddballs.
To be honest, I think the systems that work in MMOs and other games will probably be best: good tools to find friends and similarly minded folks so that your brain can decide who you spend your time with.
Though if I WOULD add something new I'd add a filter...a RECEIVING filter. As in NOT a filter on what YOU can say but a filter on what you receive. It doesn't affect the sender: they get to send whatever they want at you and get no feedback against it. BUT if you, say, set the filter to "strict" then a typical public chat request would be "you **** **** ** *** ** and ***". Could even have a HYPERSTRICT setting where any sentence with a rude word gets flat out eliminated, so you'd see them send a blank message. Again, to them they sent the message properly and get nothing telling them otherwise, but you get the filtered version.
It's a similar mentality to why squelching emotes work. It's the least freedom stomping while also offering the least amount of troll enabling (they get to say what they want but won't realize you aren't bothered by it).
OP, ignore my first post on this thread, please. I think this one is a noble and interesting idea, but sadly it would be easily exploitable for bad purposes, as some users already pointed out. :(
The whole thing is that people need to recognize that this is a game full of RNG and luck. This is not some game you play depending on your skill set and even tho i do agree with op and i understand what he wants fuck even i want that it's really unfortunate i can't make any real friends playing this game. The only friends on my list are some of the people i know irl and the other are just some who decided not to unfriend me after i added them for the 80g quest. I always accept every friend request cos' im hoping on RNG. There is always that nice player that will add you to say smth constructive 'bout the game we played but it's as rare as a random legendary in a random pack and it sucks that i can't add people i played against cos' they think i'm gonna be abusive or some shit but in reality all i want is for them to send me the deck they played cos i find it interesting or just to add someone to fulfill a quicky spectate or play a friend quest while no one is online. But the whole problem is not in blizzard's way of managing these things it's the way people are and that's why there is nothing blizzard can do about this. On a side note where is that "report a player" button? I've seen on more than one occasion people say there is a way to report a player but i've never managed to find a way to do so. Do i have to talk to blizzard support or some shit or is there an easier way?
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As we all know, Blizzard does next to nothing about people being abusive, racist, harassing, etc in chat. This is understandable! It's a really hard, labor-intensive job to sift through a ton of reports. Also, everyone has different notions of what is inappropriate - some people really value being able to talk trash, and while that's not my thing, I guess they have fun with it.
But many of us get tired of getting "fuk u lern to play" in chat 80% of the time someone friends us, and so we stop accepting all friend requests, and that's kinda a shame. Encouraging people to make new friends and have fun and laugh together is clearly one of Blizzard's goals for the game, just look at the Fireside Gatherings. Ubiquitous toxic chat does a lot of damage to that goal.
So why not let people choose their chat preferences, and handle it in an automated way? People who want some semblence of civility can select a "polite chat only" option. If you're polite-only, and someone sends you abusive messages, you flag it. If too high a percentage of your chat messages to polite-only users get flagged, you get tagged as rude, and lose the ability to send chat to polite-only users for a few days. (Or a few weeks if it happens again, or forever if it keeps happening.) Of course, if you get tagged as rude, you can't select polite-only anymore.
Minor development effort, no ongoing manual effort, everyone gets to choose the kind of chat experience they want, problem solved. Make this happen, Blizzard!
What's the plan against people who flag others maliciously?
A single flag wouldn't tag a user. For malicious flagging to work you'd need a coordinated attack by a bunch of people, all currently tagged polite, to all friend a particular user, have their request accepted, exchange chat messages, and flag them. That seems like an unnatural pattern of behavior that'd be easy to automatically detect and discredit.
Let's figure out how to keep the meta from cooling into a tepid cesspool of net-decks that suck every inch of fun out of the game (at least in casual mode) first.
Look at this thing and let me know what you think!
Of course, then there will be polite only trolls who flag everything and everyone.
I agree with this. Today I BM a guy without knowing it (i had clear lethal but didn't see iy after some seconds) , I add him to say sorry and he didnt accept (I dont blame him)
If he would have seen a "polite check", i think I would have had the chance to say sorry yo him
Maybe you don't feel there's a problem, but clearly a lot of people disagree. There are complaints about the toxicity of the Hearthstone community ALL THE TIME. Just look at the "insulting and racist player behavior" thread. And one of the usual responses to those complaints is "well duh, why are you accepting friend requests, of course it's going to be someone abusive and insulting".
I'd rather have it group fast players together and slow players together. Lightning mode please!
Clearly that's not how Blizzard views it, given that they have "add the last person I played as a friend" as prominent functionality in the client. The metaphor presented by the game and marketing is that of strangers coming to the same tavern and playing a game together. I am proposing a way to bring that metaphor closer to reality. I would not go to a tavern to play a game where I was unable to talk to anyone else in the tavern, or where most people who tried to start a conversation with me yelled insults at me.
You've yet to explain WHY this proposal wouldn't work. You refer to the DotA community. I've never played DotA; care to explain how DotA proves this proposal useless? You complain that Hearthstone chat is provided by Battle.net. That doesn't make it any more difficult to implement.
And again, this has NO EFFECT on anyone who doesn't opt in. It is not a chat ban. It's taking the concept of blocking other users and adding server support for sharing those blocking preferences, so instead of a few hundred thousand people each blocking a small handful of users which does nothing, you have a few hundred thousand people sharing their blocks so any chat they get is from someone who not many others in the group have found a reason to block.
What do you do if you have two separate people on high legend, one who is filtered out due to rude language, and one who is not, but they end up never facing each other due to this feature? I know this is quite a niche example, but say these two players ended up being something like rank 2 & rank 3 legend and they need to face each other at some point to compete for rank 1 legend, but they can't due to this feature?
This may work if you already have the rude/polite flags up for people. The problem is getting the flags up in the first place.
For example, if a person is being rude then alnog with the rudeness, they are going to go flag you, assuming this is day 1 of the patch and, thus, no one has been marked 'rude' yet. Given that this person is already going out of the way to cuss you out an additional step to mark you 'rude' doesn't seem rather silly.
As such you could potentially be marked as 'rude' by every rude person you meet while they get marked back by yourself. If, say, after 10 people you get the rude flag, that potentially means after 10 cussings you'll be automarked as rude by the system. Those rude people will eventually be marked as 'rude' as well of course.
But eventually you get a case ofa whole lot of innocent folks being dragged down to 'rude hell' not being able to talk to 'polite' folks or block the 'rude' folks.
That's just one key problem that many companies need to get a handle of: automation doesn't work for stuff like this. Any time you make an automated rule based system with set results you'll result in exceptions that fall between the cracks and the ability to manipulate the system. A great system can probably handle 60-80% of cases successfully but you need something flexible like a human brain reviewing the situation, to avoid the false flags and dirty tricksters. But if we had that then a simple report system would work out with a quick reviewer to catch the oddballs.
To be honest, I think the systems that work in MMOs and other games will probably be best: good tools to find friends and similarly minded folks so that your brain can decide who you spend your time with.
Though if I WOULD add something new I'd add a filter...a RECEIVING filter. As in NOT a filter on what YOU can say but a filter on what you receive. It doesn't affect the sender: they get to send whatever they want at you and get no feedback against it. BUT if you, say, set the filter to "strict" then a typical public chat request would be "you **** **** ** *** ** and ***". Could even have a HYPERSTRICT setting where any sentence with a rude word gets flat out eliminated, so you'd see them send a blank message. Again, to them they sent the message properly and get nothing telling them otherwise, but you get the filtered version.
It's a similar mentality to why squelching emotes work. It's the least freedom stomping while also offering the least amount of troll enabling (they get to say what they want but won't realize you aren't bothered by it).
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
OP, ignore my first post on this thread, please. I think this one is a noble and interesting idea, but sadly it would be easily exploitable for bad purposes, as some users already pointed out. :(
The whole thing is that people need to recognize that this is a game full of RNG and luck. This is not some game you play depending on your skill set and even tho i do agree with op and i understand what he wants fuck even i want that it's really unfortunate i can't make any real friends playing this game. The only friends on my list are some of the people i know irl and the other are just some who decided not to unfriend me after i added them for the 80g quest. I always accept every friend request cos' im hoping on RNG. There is always that nice player that will add you to say smth constructive 'bout the game we played but it's as rare as a random legendary in a random pack and it sucks that i can't add people i played against cos' they think i'm gonna be abusive or some shit but in reality all i want is for them to send me the deck they played cos i find it interesting or just to add someone to fulfill a quicky spectate or play a friend quest while no one is online. But the whole problem is not in blizzard's way of managing these things it's the way people are and that's why there is nothing blizzard can do about this. On a side note where is that "report a player" button? I've seen on more than one occasion people say there is a way to report a player but i've never managed to find a way to do so. Do i have to talk to blizzard support or some shit or is there an easier way?
Stay awhile and listen!